The right to water in the slums of Mumbai, India

Perspectives Attaining universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all by 2030 (sustainable development goal 6) 1 will be a major challenge, particularly in urban slum communities. In 2012, over 860 million people – about a third of the urban population of developing countries – were living in slums. 2 The primary barriers to accessing water in slums are not solely monetary or technical but also legal, institutional, and political. 3,4 In India, some slums are notified, or recognized, by the government. In some cities, notified slums are entitled to receive security of land tenure, which means that the people who live in them cannot be arbitrarily evicted. In other words, inhabitants have a form of property rights to the land even though they do not own it. People living in notified slums are also usually entitled to access city services, including connections to the water supply. In 2012, 59% of slum settlements in India were non-notified. 5 People living in non-notified settlements suffer from poorer access to piped water, latrines, electricity and public transportation when compared to notified slums; they also receive considerably less assistance from the government's slum improvement schemes. 5 Similar policies linking water entitlements to land tenure compromise water access for people living in slums in cities in other low-and middle-income countries, including Bangladesh, Ke-nya and Nigeria. 6,7 Even when sound public health and economic reasons exist for providing slums with access to municipal water supplies, lack of property rights can impede provision of this vital service. A recent court ruling from Mumbai, India, illustrates the nature of these legal and political barriers to water access and the potential of human rights law to overcome them. 4 By some estimates, Mumbai has the largest slum population of any city in the world, with more than half of its 12 million people living in informal settlements. 5 Nearly half of Mumbai's slums are non-notified. 5 The divide between notified and non-notified slums in Mumbai is tied to " cutoff " dates. 3 Slum households who can prove that they have been living in a slum located on state or municipal land prior to a specified cutoff date can obtain notified status. This policy arose in response to democratic pressure from slum dwellers , who form a large proportion of Mumbai's electorate. Currently, all slum households who settled on state or city government-owned land …